The Top 100 Tracks of 2009

90. The-Dream
"Rockin' That Shit"
[Def Jam]

At the end of each one of The-Dream's drowsy, come-on laden verses, a simple submission: "There's nothing I can say..." Like pretty much everything else he's produced since, "Rockin' That Shit" doesn't really need to say much. In a year filled with bottle-service bangers that failed to generate any sort of authentically carnal club-knock appeal, there was something so deliciously simple about a suave-ass grinder that was free of any worn-out sexting tropes. The bombastic tidiness of the chorus-- and the awesome punctuation of that titular line-- played so perfectly up against the sexy shyness of the whole endeavor. Happy to accommodate any sort of cosmic VIP fantasy you're harboring, it shouldn't take much effort to fill in those blanks while surrounded by that celestial synth hook and those impossibly deep drums. --Zach Kelly

89. No Age
"You're a Target"
[Sub Pop]

No Age might be a duo, but they've rarely sounded slight. Guitarist Randy Randall favors heaps of distortion and delay, and drummer Dean Spunt doesn't seem to sit still very often. But with pronounced harmonies and a prominent bridge, they've never sounded bigger than on "You're a Target", the final cut from a four-song EP that finds the pair pushing themselves sonically and structurally. The guitar glows and refracts, different tones slipping through one another as if this were a Growing co-write. When Spunt pounds his way in, it's off to the races. "I get laughed at/ I wanna be like you, dude/ If you're a target/ Then I guess I'm one, too," he sings, offering the sort of anti-angst mantra that should be scribbled in lockers or across the front of spiral-ring notebooks. After all, you wouldn't want the high school bully saying your new heroes sounded thin and under-produced, would you? --Grayson Currin

88. Passion Pit
"Moth's Wings"
[Frenchkiss]

Michael Angelakos' falsetto has been a divider since Passion Pit started knocking out bloggers last fall with the arrival of the Chunk of Change EP. It made many gooey and drove others crazy. A year later, much has changed: Passion Pit got a major label deal and became a full-blown band, and Manners, their first full-length, burrowed its way into the fringes of the mainstream. And while "Moth's Wings" probably wasn't the jam to do the trick, it captured Angelakos at his most restrained and lordly. Opening on a staircase hook forged purely of dulcimer, the song quickly takes flight and plays to the band's strengths. Angelakos never screams out of range nor does he give his vocals the Chipmunk treatment. He simply sings, and it works out beautifully. --David Bevan

87. Here We Go Magic
"Fangela"
[Western Vinyl]

"Fangela" sounds too sophisticated to be the four-track project it is. Though it hardly carries the gloss of a big-budget studio job, the production is immaculate without ever feeling clinical, over-arranged, or prim-- just natural. It feels otherworldly, thanks to many layers of Moog, muffled doorknocker beats, and the timbre of Luke Temple's voice. His yelping plea, "you gotta move," may be the most striking part of the track (which is saying something), like he's yelling against the tide of the orderly, inevitable momentum of the rest of the song. Temple's range may be narrow, but makes the most out of his limitations. --Jason Crock

86. Drake
"Best I Ever Had"
[Cash Money]

There's that sexless, pretty-boy, falsetto hook, which floats up into the air-conditioned synths and nearly gets lost; that beat, which sounds like someone sent a 2003-era Roc-A-Fella production through seven different house filters; those sensitive-guy panderings, which are just expertly smarmy-- "Sweatpants, hair tied, chillin with no makeup on/ That's when you the prettiest/ I hope that you don't take it wrong." There is absolutely nothing about Drake that is not cocky, slippery, insincere, and canny-- the dude recites his freestyles from a fucking Blackberry, for Christ's sake-- and "Best I Ever Had" synthesizes all of those oily, Clintonian charms into one perfect Summer Jam. If he never releases another decent song in his life, this will be enough. --Jayson Greene

85. Wavves
"No Hope Kids"
[Fat Possum]

Think your 2009 sucked? Here's how Nate Williams' kicked his off: no car, no money, no god, no girlfriend, not a whole lot but some weed and GarageBand and an afternoon or two to kill. Then, on the back of a drifty, droney, sun-spotty one-two LP punch, he suddenly found himself a little bit of an indie star; and, well, you've probably heard the rest. Whatever your thoughts on Wavves (or Wavvves), indie rock entitlement, or whether or not Jared Swilley could or should take him outside, "No Hope Kids" is tough to front on. It's a bummed-out blast of surf scum that's preternaturally tuneful and instantly relatable to anybody too faded to care about life's little foibles. It's also, in its way, weirdly prophetic: "just a bunch of people... put around [him]" would take on new meaning a few months later. Turns out non-inspiration can, at times, be inspiring. --Paul Thompson

84. Junior Boys
"Parallel Lines"
[Domino]

"Parallel Lines" is lily-white, almost unnaturally perky, and club-savvy, with chatty vocals neatly razored over mirrored synths. Startlingly, it isn't about cocaine. In fact, it isn't about much of anything. It shifts pacifically from moment to moment, unperturbed by continuity, with abrupt toasts and loaded inquiries popping off like champagne corks. "Remembering the line, an empty metaphor" sums up the sort of sublime vapidity that's handled so handsomely here. It's like the words are just inconsequential whiffs of perfume that come off the feelings. It takes a sort of grown-ass-man vibe to pull off something so languorous, and the spring-wound track delivers. Impeccably balanced between a Fred Astaire flutter and a limp, it makes the all falsetto purring feel rich with meaning, not to mention icy sex appeal. "If I forgot the lines, is it easy enough to fake it?" It is, when you've got those peaking-at-daybreak keyboards for stimulation. --Brian Howe

83. Lady Gaga
"Paparazzi"
[Interscope]

Though "Poker Face" was an irresistible earworm and global chart grand slam, there were still moments (chiefly the line "I'm bluffing with my muffin") when Lady Gaga seemed like a desperate Jenna Maroney take on electroclash. But in its flawless tabloid-baiting fusion of immaculate hooks, dominatrix beats, and Matthew-Barney-goes-Hitchcock spectacle, "Paparazzi" rendered resistance futile. Building on a fame-stalking statement of intent ("I'll follow you until you love me") "Paparazzi" was strong enough to raise her above the legion of Madonnabes-- indeed it's turned out to be the best Madonna song of the 21st century-- and delivered the first real hint of the imperious, imperial artiste to come: "There's no other superstar you know that I'll be." --Stephen Troussé

82. DJ Kaos
"Love the Nite Away (Tiedye remix)"
[Rong/DFA]

Even in a slow year DFA managed to surprise us with a platter of exultant soft funk. DJ Kaos' original was an Italo-influenced jam whose sonics were just slightly too weighty for Kaos' love utopia. Italians Do It Better tricksters Tiedye buoy the mix with warm, open disco riffs, a perfect foil for Kaos' slightly flat mouthfuls. He sounds like late-period Iggy Pop: gruff and assured and game for just about anything. --Andrew Gaerig

81. Bowerbirds
"Northern Lights"
[Dead Oceans]

"All I want is your eyes," Phill Moore and friends sing, "in the morning as we wake for a short while." And the music for "Northern Lights" gracefully acquiesces to this request. It canters and sways in a comfortably sleepy manner, with each strum of the guitar and each splash of piano dappling the song's evocative lyric in streams of sunlight. And each time the song's lyric details what it does or doesn't need, it always comes back to the one thing that's truly wanted-- a moment of intimacy with a lover, waking and staring into each other's eyes as a new day begins. In praising the group's first album, Amanda Petrusich credited Bowerbirds for their ability to "[translate] place into sound." With "Northern Lights", the group outdoes themselves, translating something private and personal into a song whose resonance and sentiment can be universally understood. --David Raposa